


With a Fiery, Aching Rib

by kuumai



Series: Gentron Week 2020 [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Post-Episode: s03e04, Telepathic Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:42:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25741513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuumai/pseuds/kuumai
Summary: “I think I can tell what you’re going to say before you say it. Like, mind reading. But only with you.”Lance opened and closed his mouth a few times before running his hands down his face. “Okay, if that’s true, that’s not even the weirdest thing to happen to us in the past twenty vargas. Let’s talk to the others about it. Just… let me go fix my hair.”
Relationships: Keith & Lance (Voltron)
Series: Gentron Week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1863325
Comments: 1
Kudos: 38
Collections: Gentronweek





	With a Fiery, Aching Rib

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Telepathic Bond

Meeting Sven in the alternate reality had shaken Keith more than he cared to admit.

Keith fell back on his cot in frustration. It wasn’t even Shiro. His  _ name _ wasn’t even Shiro. It was just—when Sven’s masked cracked apart and fell to the ground, and Keith saw Shiro’s face staring back at him, for a brief moment he had thought—he had hoped—

He turned over to plant his face in his pillow. 

It didn’t matter what he hoped. All that mattered was that Lotor got away with the comet thing and they still didn’t know what Lotor’s plan was. All that mattered was getting sleep, because it was late, and Keith was exhausted, and he had to be at his best physically and mentally to be a good enough leader for Voltron.

Yet here he was. Laying in bed for multiple vargas. Awake.

Turning over once again, Keith pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes and willed his oncoming headache to go away. He spent a few seconds contemplating getting up before deciding it was inevitable. He rolled out of bed, already clothed as usual, and plodded out of the room.

Keith didn’t leave his room with any destination in mind, but he wasn’t really one to amble without purpose, so he soon found himself wandering in the direction of the lions’ hangars. 

By the time he arrived at the Black Lion’s hangar, Keith’s eyelids were fluttering, and his headache could no longer be persuaded away by rubbing at his head. He looked toward the lion, and it stared back, emotionless eyes remaining dim. Keith had started to bond with it over the past few days, but apparently it wasn’t interested in talking to him tonight. Keith kind of deserved that, to be fair. He did beg the Black Lion not to accept him.

Keith averted his eyes from the black lion and headed left toward Red’s hangar. The bright lights illuminating the way to the Red Lion did not help Keith’s headache, to say the least.

Once Keith finally arrived in the hangar, Red was as unresponsive as the Black Lion. “Not interested in talking to me either?” Keith whispered. 

No reply, of course. She wasn’t his lion anymore. 

He walked up to her and knelt by her left paw. When he leaned against her, the cold metal soothed his pounding head, but his heart still ached. 

“I’m tired, Red.”

Again, there was no response. Not that he was expecting one. He pushed away from Red, curled on his side, and hated that his eyes started to burn. No tears. No tears.

There was a soft grumbling sound from above him, and Keith was nearly sure he was dreaming when he felt a sense of warmth like he was seeing an old friend. He glanced up and through the blurred light watched Red’s head come to rest on the floor near him. 

Keith closed his eyes and slept.

  
  
  
  


Lance woke with a rumbling stomach and an aching neck.

When he stumbled to the kitchen in his pajamas, still half-asleep, Hunk and Pidge were there to greet him, Hunk sitting at the table and Pidge perched on the counter.

“Nice hair,” Pidge commented as Lance walked past her to make himself a bowl of food goo. 

Lance smoothed a hand over his head. He couldn’t see his hair, but he was sure it didn’t look good. “Listen, I just got out of bed. I haven’t had time for my usual morning routine.” He pulled a bowl from one of the cabinets and filled it with goo.

“That’s new,” said Pidge, kicking her legs back and forth.

“Yeah,” Hunk said around a bite of goo. “You always look put together. You know, excluding the early morning emergencies and the drills Allura makes us do.”

“Thank you!” Lance said as he sat down across from Hunk. “But sometimes a man’s gotta prioritize eating. I was, like, starving when I woke up this morning.” He stuffed a heaping spoonful of food goo into his mouth to accentuate his point. Hunk nodded sagely.

Keith chose that moment to make his appearance, stumbling into the kitchen and looking about as awake as Lance felt, except that Keith was already dressed.

“Hey, sleeping beauty,” Pidge said with a laugh. Keith punched her shoulder lightly on his way to the food goo machine. She continued unfazed. “You’re usually awake before all of us.”

_ That’s because he barely sleeps at all,  _ Lance thought to himself, and he was sure it was true even though he had no proof.

“I was exhausted from the whole alternate reality business,” Keith explained as he got a bowl just as Lance did. “Plus I was, like, starving when I woke up this morning.”

Hunk gave Lance a weird look, but before Lance could ask what it was about, Pidge started chattering about some complicated thing she’d found in the castle’s library—something she read in a book. Lance couldn’t quite follow. His brain was still booting up for the day.

Keith scooped food goo into his mouth without even taking seat and watched Pidge as she talked, but Lance could tell that he too was comprehending approximately nothing.

Lance took another bite of goo and rubbed at the side of his neck. It felt like he pulled a muscle, but no matter how he massaged or stretched his neck, the ache wouldn’t go away. He glanced at Hunk, who was engrossed in Pidge’s speech about Altean technology, then at Keith, who had set his bowl on the counter and was now massaging his own neck. Only a second or two after Lance looked in his direction, Keith met his gaze and raised an eyebrow in confusion. 

Embarrassed to be caught staring, Lance instinctually looked down and folded his hands in his lap. When he glanced back up, Keith was still watching him. 

Lance pushed his chair back from the table. “I’m going to get dressed,” he announced as he walked out. Hunk and Pidge both nodded absently, too focused on their own conversation.

As he walked down the winding hallways toward his bedroom, Lance shuddered. Something about how Keith was looking at him didn’t sit right.

Then there were quick footsteps behind him, as if someone were trying to catch up with him, and Lance knew it was Keith before he even turned around.

“Lance,” said Keith, slightly out of breath. “Say something.”

“I… what?”

“Something’s… weird. Wrong.”

Lance shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, man, I know this is the pot calling the kettle black, but I’m too tired for shenanigans right now. Just tell me what’s up.”

Keith bit his lip like he wasn’t sure Lance would believe whatever it was he wanted to say. 

“Out with it,” Lance insisted.

“I think I can tell what you’re going to say before you say it. Like, mind reading. But only with you.”

So that was why he didn’t think Lance would believe him.

Lance opened and closed his mouth a few times before running his hands down his face. “Okay, if that’s true, that’s not even the weirdest thing to happen to us in the past twenty vargas. Let’s talk to the others about it. Just… let me go fix my hair.”

  
  
  
  


“So Keith can tell what you’re thinking, but you can’t tell what he’s thinking?” Allura asked.

Keith and Lance were sitting on one of the couches in the common room. Allura, Pidge, and Hunk sat across from them, and Coran was pacing around them all. 

Keith’s knee bounced up and down, and he folded his arms in front of himself. They’d gone over this so many times already. Explaining the whole situation over and over was getting him worked up, and he needed to calm down, especially since Lance could literally feel how stressed he was. But everytime he thought about how Lance could read his mind, it made him even more stressed, and the endless cycle continued.

“That was what I thought at first,” Lance replied, sounding surprisingly calm considering he could probably hear Keith’s thought spirals. “But now that I think about it, when we were eating breakfast I could kind of, I don’t know, feel when he was lying.” 

Keith started, but before he could speak, Hunk said, “What? Lying?”

“Well, not lying, but like….” Lance tilted his head. “Not saying everything that he was thinking.”

Keith hunched in on himself. “That’s how normal conversations work,” Keith snapped. “You’re not supposed to say every single thing that’s on your mind.”

“No one was getting upset with you,” Allura said placatingly.

Keith rolled his eyes. 

“Anyway,” said Lance, “I definitely can sense what he’s going to say before he says it.”

_ Thank you, _ Keith thought to himself. Lance should’ve just started with that.

“You’re welcome,” Lance said aloud.

Sighing impatiently, Keith said, “Okay, so do any of you have any idea what this is? And how to fix it?”

Coran shook his head, not pausing his pacing. Allura hummed contemplatively and leaned back in her seat. 

“Keith, think of a word,” Hunk instructed.

“Uh, okay?” he replied.  _ This is dumb. _

“Now Lance, tell us what he’s thinking.”

“He’s thinking ‘this is dumb,’” said Lance.

“It’s true,” Keith said, nodding. “I was thinking that.”

Pidge rolled her eyes. “We don’t need Lance to tell us that; we can tell you’re thinking that just by looking at you. Plus we just have to take Keith at his word because he didn’t tell any of us what he was thinking before Lance said it.”

Keith glared at her. “Are you implying that we’re trying to prank you or something? Have you met me?”

Pidge raised her hands in a defensive gesture. “Look, I just wanted to consider every possibility.”

Keith jumped to his feet. “Oh my—I don’t have time to play these games and try to figure out every—every intricacy about whatever’s going on!” Trying to put space between himself and the others, he moved away from the couches and planted himself in the corner of the room. “I don’t want to know what new superpowers we’ve developed.”  _ I want to get rid of them. _

“That’s what we’re trying to do!” said Lance, now also standing.

“Stop responding to things I haven’t even said yet!” Keith exclaimed. “Get out of my head!”

“I’m not  _ trying _ to hear your thoughts, I just am,” Lance replied. “I can’t help it, so don’t get mad at me for it.”

Keith squeezed his eyes shut and covered his face with his hands.  _ If Shiro were here, he’d know how to fix this,  _ thought Keith.

For the most part, Keith couldn’t hear full sentences from Lance, just general concepts and feelings, but his next thought rang loud and clear.

_ If Shiro were here, he’d know how to keep Keith quiet. _

Keith was stunned into silence for a second. When Keith removed his hands from his face and looked at Lance, Lance did, to his credit, look somewhat abashed. Before Keith could recover enough to respond, Coran stepped in front of him and blocked his view of Lance.

“Keith, why don’t you take a walk? I’ll do a bit of research on telepathy, and we’ll reconvene to talk about my findings when the two of you have calmed yourselves.”

Now also abashed, Keith avoided Coran’s gaze and gave a short nod. 

He tried not to look like he was fleeing as he left the room. 

  
  
  
  


Lance was sitting cross-legged on the sunken couches, pretending he couldn’t tell that Allura and Coran were quietly discussing things in the corner of the room, when Keith returned to the common room several minutes later. At Coran’s request, Hunk and Pidge had left to busy themselves elsewhere.

Having physical distance between them didn’t seem to prevent the telepathic connection in the slightest, but it did help both of them to calm down. While Keith was gone, Lance could sense him measuring his breaths and repeating  _ patience yields focus  _ to himself as he paced the hallways.

Out of the corner of his eye, Lance watched Keith shift awkwardly from foot to foot by the doorway as Allura and Coran finished their conversation.

“Alright!” Coran exclaimed finally, clapping his hands together. “Let’s figure this out, shall we?” He and Allura made their way to sit on the couches, but Keith stayed put.

“Firstly, have either of you used the mind melding devices recently?” asked Allura. “Neither of us have heard of any side effects like this to come from them, but given we have no other leads, they seem the most likely cause of this… telepathic bond of sorts.”

“I haven’t,” said Lance, and Keith shook his head. Lance could, obviously, tell he wasn’t lying.

Coran sighed. “Well, there goes our best theory,” he said, rubbing the end of his mustache between two fingers. 

Allura folded her hands in her lap. “The only other cause I can surmise is something to do with the lions,” she said. “There’s still a great deal we do not know about their abilities, though I can’t imagine what could have happened to lead to your reading each other's minds.”

Almost immediately, Lance was hit full-force with Keith’s memories of last night.

Lance stood and spun on Keith. “You talked to Red last night? And  _ slept _ next to her?”

Folding his arms in front of himself, Keith scowled. “I couldn’t sleep, and the Black Lion was ignoring me.”

Lance scoffed. “Red was ignoring you, too, at first! Don’t bother trying to leave out important details when you talk to me. I can tell what you’re thinking, remember?”

“As if I could forget!”

“Alright, boys,” Coran warned, moving to stand between them. “We’ve already established that arguing won’t solve anything. Both of you come sit, and we’ll figure this out together.”

With a huff, Lance sat back down, and Keith finally came down the stairs to sit in the lounge as well.

Coran sat and clasped his hands together. “Now, Keith, Lance said that the Red Lion was ignoring you at first. Did she eventually respond to you?”

Keith was still hugging himself defensively, but he had apparently learned to respond honestly, because he said, “I guess so. She kind of laid her head down beside me as I was falling asleep. Honestly, I thought I was dreaming when that happened, until I woke up this morning and she was still positioned like that.”

“I see,” Coran said, pondering. “Do you feel a bond with the Red Lion?”

Inhaling carefully, Keith closed his eyes, and Lance felt a strange sensation similar to the feeling of reaching out to his lion, except instead he was being pulled uncomfortably between the Red Lion and Keith himself. 

“Yes,” Keith and Lance said in unison, and Keith glared at Lance, but there was no heat behind it.

“Interesting,” Allura said, twirling a lock of white hair around her finger. “I suppose having two paladins connected with a single lion could lead to a situation such as this.”

“What about when I used the Black Lion to save Shiro that one time?” Keith asked. “Shiro was still bonded to it, and we didn’t have any problems.”

“Perhaps flying the black lion in a pinch due to a dangerous situation did not classify as forming a bond,” Allura replied. “Or perhaps these telepathic powers are a rare fluke that would not occur every time two pilots connect with one lion.”

“Also, Blue totally shut me out before Allura took over,” Lance added, “so there was no overlap in paladins there.”

“Then this seems like the most likely cause,” said Coran.

Lance looked at Keith, who was staring at the ground. “Then it should be an easy fix,” Lance said. “Go ask Red to shut you out.”

Lance could hear Keith’s feeble protests before his lips even began to form the words, and irritation cut through him.

“Red is my lion now!” Lance snapped. “You’re not supposed to have a bond with her anyway, so don’t go arguing that we try something else when this is the best theory we can come up with.”

Lance expected Keith to object, or at least be upset, but instead he felt calmly resigned. 

“You’re right,” Keith said. “I’ll go talk to her.”

  
  
  
  


“You have to let me go,” Keith said plainly, standing in the cockpit of the Red Lion. Almost immediately after he said it, he knew that in truth, he was the one who had to let her go.

He ran his hands over the pilot seat. Stared at the blank space where the heads-up display usually was. Touched the cold metal of the walls in reverence.

“Goodbye, Red,” he said to the empty pit.

_ I’m proud of you,  _ she said in reply. 

When he walked out, he didn’t look back. 

Lance was waiting in the hangar for him, looking as though he just eavesdropped on a personal conversation. On second thought, that is exactly what he just did, Keith supposed.

Lance fiddled with his hands for a moment before dropping them to his sides. “Um,” he began, “I’m sorry. I was being kind of—well, really insensitive earlier. I of all people should know that losing connection with a lion is never simple or easy. It sucks. So… I’m sorry.”

Caught off guard by Lance’s sudden sincerity, Keith faltered. “Ah, uh, I was being insensitive, too. You were right; the Red Lion is yours now. I overstepped my boundaries by forming a bond with her again. You’re a great Red Paladin, and I’ve been working on being a good Black Paladin, so I shouldn’t have….” He waved his hand as if to summon a proper word choice. “I shouldn’t have backpedaled like this. I’m sorry.”

Lance gave a hesitant smile. “We’re even, then?”

“Yeah,” Keith said, nodding. “Even.”

Keith thought that would be the end of their conversation, but Lance stayed put. “Are you… are you okay?” Lance asked, followed by a short, humorless laugh. “I mean, that’s a stupid question. It’s just… like I said, I know that it sucks to lose a lion.”

“Yeah, it does. It… hurts,” Keith admitted, surprised at his own vulnerability. He stared at his shoes. “I guess that’s why I went to talk to her in the first place. ‘Cause I miss her, I mean. I guess I was trying to cling onto something that’s gone. There’s a lot of things changing all at once.” His voice cracked, and he realized with a feeling of dread that his eyes were watering. “Sorry, I don’t know where this is coming from. I didn’t mean to lay all of this on you.”

“It’s alright,” Lance replied without hesitation. Keith looked up, and Lance had such concern and sympathy on his face, and—why did he have to be so nice? Keith blinked, and the tears fell, and he ignored them.

“I miss her,” he said. “Everything’s changing, and it sucks, and it hurts, and I miss her. And I miss  _ him _ .” 

“Oh,” said Lance. “ _ Oh. _ ”

Evidently Keith couldn’t ignore the tears for long. His eyes screwed shut, and he brought his hands up to cover his face, so he couldn’t see Lance move. But he did feel Lance wrap his arms around Keith’s shoulders and pull him into a hug.

“I’m sorry,” Keith mumbled into his hands. 

“It’s alright.”

“Everyone misses Shiro. I shouldn’t make it all about me.”

“It’s okay, man. You’re allowed to be honest about how you feel.”

“I miss him,” Keith whispered, his throat burning. “I’m so alone.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m here.”

**Author's Note:**

> Surprise, I also used the prompt “Crying in Front of the Other”


End file.
